1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to manifolds for intravenous (IV) systems. More particularly, this invention relates to IV manifolds that are particularly suited for use in administering anesthesia medications.
2. Description of the Background Art
Presently there exist many components to intravenous (IV) systems designed to deliver medications to a patient or to draw blood from the patient. Historically, IV systems employed a variety of ports that allowed a medical practitioner to access the port via a hypodermic needle to administer fluids to the patient or to withdraw blood from the patient. In more recent years, such ports have been supplanted by needleless access ports containing a swabable valve with a Luer fitting that allowed the medical practitioner to directly connect the syringe to the needleless access port without the use of a hypodermic needle. Needleless access ports are universally preferred over ports that are accessed by means of a hypodermic needle to eliminate the risk of inadvertent needle pricks to the medical practitioner that could otherwise result in the spreading of a disease, particularly AIDS.
In the cardiac field, it is often necessary to administer a number of different medicines to the patient. Hence, IV systems have been developed which employ a series of needleless access valves that are “ganged” closely together. Ganged needleless access valves allow the use of a plurality of syringes of medications to be connected in fluid communication with an IV line throughout the surgical procedure for the selective administration of the medicine as needed. Representative ganged needleless access valves by Quest Medical, Inc. are sold under the trademarks “Q2®” “Checkmate®”, “Q2 Multiport” and “Q2 T-Extension Set.” Quest's ganged needleless access valves eliminate the use of numerous needless access valves, minimize residual volume or “dead space” in the injection ports, allow easy one-handed operation and allow syringes to remain attached for selective injection throughout a surgical procedure. Quest's ganged swabable access ports further include integrated check valves to prevent retrograde flow from the patient into the respective syringes. Quest's ganged swabable access ports may be conveniently mounted on IV pole holders for easy, stable delivery of the medicine.
Quest's ganged access ports have employed specialized housings for containing the needleless access valves in a variety of combinations of two-port to six-port gang arrangements. Consequently, the prior art ganged access ports are expensive to manufacture and must be stocked in a variety of arrangements.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an improvement which overcomes the aforementioned inadequacies of the prior art devices and provides an improvement which is a significant contribution to the advancement of the ganged access port art.
Another object of this invention is to provide a ganged injection port which utilizes swabable access valves that are ganged together at T-sites by tubing and then mounted in base in close proximity to one another.
Another object of this invention is to provide a ganged access injection port for conventional swabable valves which are manufactured in interlocking segments to allow quick assembly of the number of segments desired for a particular surgical procedure.
The foregoing has outlined some of the pertinent objects of the invention. These objects should be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the intended invention. Many other beneficial results can be attained by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention within the scope of the disclosure. Accordingly, other objects and a fuller understanding of the invention may be had by referring to the summary of the invention and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment in addition to the scope of the invention defined by the claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.